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Mars Pre-Lab
Saturday, 3 October 2015 02:44We plan to see The Martian on Saturday. And I'm about as ready as I can be.
This was not the original weekend that The Martian was supposed to open. And it still has gotten stiffed at the local IMAX, boxed in by Everest and The Walk. So we'll go see it in 3D in Holland.
I am way behind on some of my reviews. Andy Wier's book The Martian I never got around to reviewing, because I ended up sick and in the hospital. As for the other pre-lab items...
I'll insert my perennial complaint about the year when Mission to Mars and Red Planet came out -- the last time we had big budget Mars manned mission movies. Both were flawed and both felt that going to Mars wasn't interesting or exciting enough, so they had to invoke aliens.
Sigh.
And there were technical flaws, too. Still, they were pretty films. Just wasted good casts on dumb scripts.
A few weeks ago we bought a DVD of Race to Mars -- a Canadian/French production that we hadn't heard of. But Martin Shoemaker mentioned on Facebook that it was on sale at Amazon and wasn't half bad. They did a nice job for not having a huge budget, though I do have some comments and crits to make when I get around to do a review Real Soon Now. But if you're a space bug, you should check it out.
And then there's the webcomic Mare Internum by Der-shing Helmer. It's updating slowly and I'm not sure where the hell it's going -- but it is beautiful to look at and mesmerizing. Check it out and stick with it. It's very much worth it so far. Even better after NASA's announcement about water on Mars this week... As with a lot of slowly evolving webcomics I read, you might want to stay for the comments to get insights on what's going on.
I even just finished tonight revising my Mars story "Billionaire" which earned an Honorable Mention in the WOTF Q3 2015 contest. Plan on sending it out to F&SF and Analog Real Soon Now. We were out of town when the 30 June deadline came along and I didn't have a printer, so Mrs. Dr. Phil hasn't read that story yet.
I've not dwelt much on reviews, either print/online/friend, but plenty of comments that it is as good as the trailers were looking. So we are very excited.
I have a bad feeling I'm going to read a lot of science literacy book reports on The Martian this semester... (evil-grin)
Dr. Phil
UPDATE: Oh, I was going to mention that I ended buying an eBook of The Martian for the Kindles. Had intended to finish it before the movie, but didn't. Forgot about Amazon's Matchbook program, where they discount Kindle books you've bought from them in print -- and they don't make it easy to find. I bought The Martian on sale, but would've saved like two bucks if I'd remembered Matchbook. I think this is the second time I've used Matchbook.
This was not the original weekend that The Martian was supposed to open. And it still has gotten stiffed at the local IMAX, boxed in by Everest and The Walk. So we'll go see it in 3D in Holland.
I am way behind on some of my reviews. Andy Wier's book The Martian I never got around to reviewing, because I ended up sick and in the hospital. As for the other pre-lab items...
I'll insert my perennial complaint about the year when Mission to Mars and Red Planet came out -- the last time we had big budget Mars manned mission movies. Both were flawed and both felt that going to Mars wasn't interesting or exciting enough, so they had to invoke aliens.
Sigh.
And there were technical flaws, too. Still, they were pretty films. Just wasted good casts on dumb scripts.
A few weeks ago we bought a DVD of Race to Mars -- a Canadian/French production that we hadn't heard of. But Martin Shoemaker mentioned on Facebook that it was on sale at Amazon and wasn't half bad. They did a nice job for not having a huge budget, though I do have some comments and crits to make when I get around to do a review Real Soon Now. But if you're a space bug, you should check it out.
And then there's the webcomic Mare Internum by Der-shing Helmer. It's updating slowly and I'm not sure where the hell it's going -- but it is beautiful to look at and mesmerizing. Check it out and stick with it. It's very much worth it so far. Even better after NASA's announcement about water on Mars this week... As with a lot of slowly evolving webcomics I read, you might want to stay for the comments to get insights on what's going on.
I even just finished tonight revising my Mars story "Billionaire" which earned an Honorable Mention in the WOTF Q3 2015 contest. Plan on sending it out to F&SF and Analog Real Soon Now. We were out of town when the 30 June deadline came along and I didn't have a printer, so Mrs. Dr. Phil hasn't read that story yet.
I've not dwelt much on reviews, either print/online/friend, but plenty of comments that it is as good as the trailers were looking. So we are very excited.
I have a bad feeling I'm going to read a lot of science literacy book reports on The Martian this semester... (evil-grin)
Dr. Phil
UPDATE: Oh, I was going to mention that I ended buying an eBook of The Martian for the Kindles. Had intended to finish it before the movie, but didn't. Forgot about Amazon's Matchbook program, where they discount Kindle books you've bought from them in print -- and they don't make it easy to find. I bought The Martian on sale, but would've saved like two bucks if I'd remembered Matchbook. I think this is the second time I've used Matchbook.
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